Is it wrong to be racist?

[Iam90]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

you can get away with ad hominem and a semblance of ethos when arguing with retards rubix but you can't just get away with "i've read more books than u!" "i'm smarter than u!" "u don't understand anything u mean!!" right now

Nobody disagrees about what we mean by racism. Racism is the belief that one race is superior/inferior to another, at the most basic level of definition (genetics aside). It's definitely "wrong" to be racist in this way (because, not only is it "morally wrong" as a result of being offensive, where morality is a construct of social optima, but it's "statistically wrong" to judge the value of a set of variables before they are observed. It's also biologically false). The question arises when we look at distributions, where the trends DO emerge. It is wrong, statistically, to deny that these trends exist. Whenever we meet someone new, it's always a good idea to keep an open mind and not judge by race, to be sure.

here's where you're and you're being obtuse, probably intentionally. yes, people disagree over the term racism, precisely because you're refusing to look at the term from a laymen perspective.

i don't think anyone here except you, including the creator of the topic, wanted to talk about how to examine statistical trends and how to act on those trends - they are talking about exactly this: "Racism is the belief that one race is superior/inferior to another, at the most basic level of definition (genetics aside)." and not the proceeding.

It's fine if you want to go off on a tangent about statistical distribution, but don't act like an angry frothing idiot when we agree that resource distribution poises races uniquely over another in hierarchy, but disagree that it connects to the idea of this thread; that is, is the idea of racism that you just agreed is what we hold as racism justifiable.

Diamond's and your argument justify only what they intend to justify, the racial hierarchies and trends in place as a result of certain distributions; NOT the sort of definitional racism that this thread is about.

Not expecting you to get your head out of your ass because you're ****ing rubix but who knows

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Ungh. Why is the average FFR user so stupid? How do you get through the day?

"Laymen" racism stems from the underlying concepts I refer to to begin with.

Dear lord. You can't solve racism from a "layman perspective." It just doesn't work. The roots of racism don't lie there. You have to approach it at a much more core level.

[devonin]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

So in order to stop idiots from being racists, the one thing we -can't- do is actually address the definition and consequences of the racism that they're actually putting into practice?

Instead we need to try and tackle things well above their heads, and try to communicate to a yokel who wants to drag a black guy behind his truck that the only reason he has for feeling like he's better than the other guy is that thousands of years ago, the migrating peoples who would eventually become caucasians happened to end up in an area of the world uniquely designed to force them to develop faster technologically?

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Devonin: Head. Out of ass. Now.

That is *clearly* *not* what I am arguing, and that's a very intellectually dishonest thing to invoke. The only way to address the views of the yokel who wants to drag the black guy behind his truck is to properly target those black families who have been hindered as a result of the disadvantageous initial conditions (i.e. those in our current society without much opportunity). You solve it on macro levels: Education reform, improving communities, improving security -- and doing it all in such a way that minimizes backlash (improve it for everyone and you get a scaling effect) and lasts long enough to phase out the stereotypes upon which racism stems by bringing cross-racial properties to a more comparable level/basis. Even on a macro level, it's very difficult.

The problem right now, for instance, is that AA doesn't work. Most whites think it benefits blacks, but really, whites benefit more often (namely white females).

The only way to eliminate the perception of obvious differences is to remove the differences. You will never solve the problem of racism by just telling everyone to get along. That's a mind-numbingly surface-level approach. It may work on certain individual cases among interpersonal relationships, but it doesn't address the roots of racism that continue to perpetuate and provide advantages to one group of races over another on a larger scale.

Black slavery, for instance, was catastrophic. So many white kids nowadays don't want to believe that they didn't work hard for the privileges they now enjoy. Somehow "people should just get over slavery because it happened so long ago" -- the standard excuse. Unfortunately, such things have profound ripple effects. There's a very fundamental disadvantage to being born of a certain race, and you won't solve it by just handwaving things aside. You have to face the statistical determinisms and historical causalities for what they are and figure out the best way to address them at minimal cost.

It's not "cold." It's not "detached." It's not "turning people into numbers." It's actually figuring out what causes and perpetuates racism and how you can best go about solving the problem. If we all attacked the problem the way people in this thread as suggested, we'd never get anywhere because the major problems that fuel racial difference perceptions would not be addressed -- those differences are not small enough to override everything else.

It's not feasible to promote color-indifference. You can't just tell people to disregard skin color and accept people for who they are, statistical trends aside. People may go around saying they treat everyone equally, but they empirically do not (I don't even need to begin to hammer you over the head with the countless studies for this). Trying to fix racism with this type of promotion is like trying to kill weeds by mowing over the top of them from time to time. They'll always come back until you dig deep enough to actually attack the underlying causes and drivers.

[Izzy]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Is it wrong to hate someone based on their values, beliefs, morals, and/or appearance?

You can not like them sure, but I still think it wrong to hate someone to such a degree just on the basis of them being different.

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

depends

[ComSec]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Is it wrong to make decisions based on correlations?

[Iam90]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Devonin: Head. Out of ass. Now.

That is *clearly* *not* what I am arguing, and that's a very intellectually dishonest thing to invoke. The only way to address the views of the yokel who wants to drag the black guy behind his truck is to properly target those black families who have been hindered as a result of the disadvantageous initial conditions (i.e. those in our current society without much opportunity). You solve it on macro levels: Education reform, improving communities, improving security -- and doing it all in such a way that minimizes backlash (improve it for everyone and you get a scaling effect) and lasts long enough to phase out the stereotypes upon which racism stems by bringing cross-racial properties to a more comparable level/basis. Even on a macro level, it's very difficult.

The problem right now, for instance, is that AA doesn't work. Most whites think it benefits blacks, but really, whites benefit more often (namely white females).

The only way to eliminate the perception of obvious differences is to remove the differences. You will never solve the problem of racism by just telling everyone to get along. That's a mind-numbingly surface-level approach. It may work on certain individual cases among interpersonal relationships, but it doesn't address the roots of racism that continue to perpetuate and provide advantages to one group of races over another on a larger scale.

Black slavery, for instance, was catastrophic. So many white kids nowadays don't want to believe that they didn't work hard for the privileges they now enjoy. Somehow "people should just get over slavery because it happened so long ago" -- the standard excuse. Unfortunately, such things have profound ripple effects. There's a very fundamental disadvantage to being born of a certain race, and you won't solve it by just handwaving things aside. You have to face the statistical determinisms and historical causalities for what they are and figure out the best way to address them at minimal cost.

It's not "cold." It's not "detached." It's not "turning people into numbers." It's actually figuring out what causes and perpetuates racism and how you can best go about solving the problem. If we all attacked the problem the way people in this thread as suggested, we'd never get anywhere because the major problems that fuel racial difference perceptions would not be addressed -- those differences are not small enough to override everything else.

It's not feasible to promote color-indifference. You can't just tell people to disregard skin color and accept people for who they are, statistical trends aside. People may go around saying they treat everyone equally, but they empirically do not (I don't even need to begin to hammer you over the head with the countless studies for this). Trying to fix racism with this type of promotion is like trying to kill weeds by mowing over the top of them from time to time. They'll always come back until you dig deep enough to actually attack the underlying causes and drivers.

no one is questioning the efficacy of instituting macro-level mechanism (like education reform, etc) in ameliorating the situation. that's not what the topic was about and not what anyone was addressing (aside from you); the question was "is being racist wrong?"

which it is, given what racism means in the context of the topic. you're creating strawmen because no one is arguing against the point you're trying to make; you injected it into this topic.

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

No, because the answer "is racism wrong" is not an easy question. Everyone's "obvious" response is "yes." This is not what happens in practice, and it's not as utopian as saying "everyone should get along." It's a perpetuation of the same, tired old issues.

If we all say "Yes, racism is bad," this is an obvious, meaningless social truth to most. The problem is that few act in line with their own opinion -- and then the real question becomes "So, why not?"

The obvious answer is that we run into someone of a different race and try to treat him/her as an equal. This is the "right" way to handle it. But it's almost never what the data supports. It's a meaningless question that people like to bat around and then drop. If you want to talk about something that matters in the subject, you have to look a little more deeply into what it means for racism to be "wrong" or "right" and why (and, as a result, you have to look into the implications of that reasoning) -- which, SURPRISE SURPRISE, leads to the points I am making.

[Izzy]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

I don't see any reason to analyze the question further then the obvious answer. There is no practical reason to accept racism as being ok. Even if it is inevitable I think people should always be working towards being tolerant.

[Patashu]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

If the 'obvious' answer is yes, why are there so many racists?

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

If the 'obvious' answer is yes, why are there so many racists?

This is my point.

This question is often a massively useless hypocrisy because most people are racists.

[Izzy]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

If the 'obvious' answer is yes, why are there so many racists?

Because the ones that are extreme racist don't think it is wrong and everyone else just has subtle racist tendencies that they don't know about. It's probably just human nature to hate things you don't understand. That doesn't mean it is "right" though.

[ComSec]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

everybody acts based on correlations. thats how our brains work

[Vendetta21]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

No, because the answer "is racism wrong" is not an easy question. Everyone's "obvious" response is "yes." This is not what happens in practice, and it's not as utopian as saying "everyone should get along." It's a perpetuation of the same, tired old issues.

If we all say "Yes, racism is bad," this is an obvious, meaningless social truth to most. The problem is that few act in line with their own opinion -- and then the real question becomes "So, why not?"

The obvious answer is that we run into someone of a different race and try to treat him/her as an equal. This is the "right" way to handle it. But it's almost never what the data supports. It's a meaningless question that people like to bat around and then drop. If you want to talk about something that matters in the subject, you have to look a little more deeply into what it means for racism to be "wrong" or "right" and why (and, as a result, you have to look into the implications of that reasoning) -- which, SURPRISE SURPRISE, leads to the points I am making.

Okay talking about latent Other-izing of people rather than active conscious decisions to be racist is once again tangential. You keep trying to change the topic so that you can make an arcane pretentious point.

Yes it's a knee-jerk reaction when you're meeting someone very different from what you're used to to not immediately know how to respond but seriously if any person just tries to proceed by accepting that person as a unique individual rather than as a part of some distinct group with homogeneous characteristics I guarantee you that you will fair better than trying to use an aggregate of statistics because honestly the amount of information you would need to know to make the latter strategy remotely effective is probably an entire university library.

Also you've made a lot of implications this is useful but I haven't seen you give one real way to use anything you talk about.

Keep playing mental gymnastics you will impress some people and I guess that's what you're going for.